Chapter One: Relationship Laws

You opened this book because you want to believe in relationships, particularly your most intimate one. Yet, you may be discouraged that love and initial infatuation takes a relationship only so far. You know the statistics that most relationships, married or unmarried, break up. You may be looking to this book to increase your odds.We can’t just wind up love and let it go and expect love to last. Relationships require knowledge, skills and healthy habits. Just as the habits of smoking cigarettes and eating ice cream destroy our bodies, while habitual exercise and eating vegetables maintain our health, there are skills we can learn, practice and develop into habits that strengthen our relationships.Why do parents teach their children to say “please” and “thank you” and hope that these respectful words become a part of their instinctive habitual behavior? Because parents know that these words will create a civil constructive tone in all of their children’s relationships for the rest of their lives. These words and others like them become gentle background music, habits that can be part of the social and intimate atmosphere of their children’s world.This book acts as a guide to healthy relationship habits, like listening— no, really listening, communion, accountability, confessional communication, third position conflict resolution, and transforming anger into compassion.I wrote this book not because I am a good husband and can model what I know. I am a mediocre husband at best. This book is much better than I am. My marriage has lasted over twenty-seven years but I have two divorces in my relationship history. Though I have never been great at relationships, I have always searched for ways to improve my part.My search to get better at loving my partner qualifies me to write this book, not my success or lack of success. I have no ambition to be the perfect mate, because then I would become smug and my journey toward becoming a better lover would be over. My many failures, some subtle and some grand, have taught me most of what I write in this book.This book invites you to share this journey into our mistakes. If you read this book, you will become more aware of yours, not less. You will do battle with your pride and your ego. You will become aware of laws that have unconsciously governed your behavior. You will learn skills that will transform angry defensive conflicts into respectful intimate conversations. You will have opportunities to practice these skills and to build them into habits.Though relationship work is difficult, sometimes painful and sometimes ineffective in changing the relationship, it always expands our hearts, moves our souls and builds our characters. It engages us in the battle with our egos and our pride and brings us compassion and humility. These are precious gifts that lead us to the rocking chair as warm loving appreciative elders, rather than crotchety, complaining mean-spirited curmudgeons.This book offers solutions to the relationship puzzle. The solutions apply the laws of relationship physics. Caring so much about another person puts our egos at risk. Love often creates more problems than it solves. Using our passion to build a relationship is not part of our DNA. The Laws of Nature tend to tear relationships apart.I hope to describe the reasons for this and help you use the same principles that tear down relationships as tools to protect and establish healthy relationship habits. This book provides skills that hopefully will become habits. Once established, habits become easier to maintain. Developing these habits will help keep love from becoming a monster and it will help transform dangerous caring into healthy love.Our culture offers little help. Madison Avenue and the movies promote a throw-away value system. Our world moves so quickly now that it is more difficult to establish connections and we have so many choices that we disconnect easily. Even relationship professionals can tend to become cynical about long-term commitments.Consider John: The View that Relationships Don’t WorkI was having lunch with a colleague, John, tall, thin, fifty-plus, longish white hair, a mustache, a marriage and family therapist, teaching counseling at a local college. His ready smile and attentive eyes made clear why his clients would enjoy their therapy hour with him.We had just placed our order when John said, “I don’t counsel couples to stay together anymore. I see my job as helping them transition out of their relationship and get on with their life’s next chapter.“I am so grateful for my divorce. It took two therapists and three years to set me free and I have never looked back. Monogamy doesn’t work. All of us get bored, commitment kills joy, security kills lust, stability kills desire. I would rather slit my wrists than be married. She disappointed me. I disappointed her. To stay married I had to run marathons. She had to drink more wine. Part of it was that I couldn’t or didn’t want to keep my zipper zipped. But most of the problem was that relationships required such hard work. She wanted me to change. I wanted her to change. I always blamed her. She always blamed me. I was stubborn. Even if I could, I wouldn’t do what she asked and she was the same toward me. Then, soon after we divorced, I found myself changing, becoming more like she had wished I could be for her. And I think the divorce changed her too. Oh, the divorce was painful and difficult but not nearly as painful and difficult as staying in the marriage.“Now when I meet someone, I make it clear that I don’t believe in long-term relationships. Hell, I don’t believe in long-term anything. I believe only in now, the present moment. If it feels right, do it. This works for me.“When I’m counseling a couple, I try to help them see how nearly impossible it is for their relationship to make them happy. I help them see that life would be so much simpler without the bonds of a commitment. Once they see that and break free of those entanglements and complications, they feel liberated. I know I do.“Relationships are just too hard. You would have to be crazy to try to make one work, crazy or stupid. They hurt too much.”I agree with much of what John said. I would just add one more word. I would say one has to be crazy, stupid or brave to commit to a relationship. The book is for the brave.Why, you might ask if marriage and commitment hurt so, would anyone want this pain? The answer is that relationships expand our souls and build our character. When we relate to others, we must negotiate our needs with theirs and adapt and change. Success in our relationship negotiations comes as we understand the other’s perspective and their experience of us.We can solve our relationship problems by cutting off the relationship (or divorcing, if our relationship is a marriage). But if we don’t use cut-off strategies to solve our relationship problems and work on solving them instead, we can grow and change. We can become smarter, kinder and more compassionate. This is why we need relationships, because they make us better. It hurts sometimes, but less and less often, as we develop strong loving habits.Yes, relationships require hard work. They require change, growth, apologies and accountability; patience, compassion and more patience and compassion.If you are solving relationship problems, you have a sore tongue from the many times you have bitten it to contain words that don’t need speaking. You have exhausted your ears and brain from listening and your self-esteem suffers because you have had the courage to say once again, “I’m sorry, my fault.” And this becomes easier if listening and being accountable becomes a habit.The Three LawsThis chapter proposes three laws that govern every system, whether a physical/ecological system or a human/emotional system, such as a relationship. The first law has to do with balance, homeostasis or equilibrium. Simply stated: Every system seeks equilibrium or balance.This chapter proposes entropy as the second system’s law: Every system tends to deteriorate over time, if it does not receive new resources, energy and attention. Chaos happens and stress is part of life.The third law is that a body in motion tends to stay in and a body at rest tends to remain at rest. This is the law of momentum and it applies to couples. The momentum of a couple matters. If couples have a positive momentum, then it is easier to maintain this motion in a positive direction. If a couple is moving in a negative direction, they will likely continue moving in that direction.This third law is what makes building positive habits in relationships important. It becomes easier to maintain a constructive habit than it is to begin a habit or change the direction of a relationship.Therefore, building skills that partners use so often that the skills become habits is the goal of this book. Once habits are established, they become easier to maintain.This book will introduce several skills that you can learn, practice and build into habits.Considering the three relationship laws together, relationships tend toward a balance; entropy usually transforms a positive balance into a negative balance; and momentum continues this process toward a more negative balance in relationships unless something is done to protect the positive balance from entropy and keep the momentum of the relationship moving in a positive direction.This is the process that my colleague described in marriages and the reason he does not believe in long-term relationships.Fiery Disintegration: Casey and KenCasey and Ken sat across from me on the couch, a thirty-something couple with two children, both with demanding high profile lives, he an attorney for a major law firm, she, a commercial realtor leasing agent for several large downtown sky scrapers. They are an example of a couple in a balanced negative cycle, worn down by entropy and moving further into hurt, blame and meanness.“I’m exhausted,” Casey began. “We have nothing in common except for our children. Our home mortgage and tuition for the children’s private schools have trapped me in this marriage where it’s all on me. I make more money than he does. He has a good job and he provides our insurance. But he does not help pick up the children, pay the bills, mow the yard, pick up the house and wash dishes, cook meals, do the laundry and put things away. I do all these everyday things with no help from him.”“And where am I?” Ken asked. “I have a job too. My law firm expects me there, to bill fifty hours plus every week.”“And to play golf and to drink with the partners,” she replied.“Why should I come home?” he said. “We have sex once a month, if I’m lucky. You snarl at me the moment I walk in the door.”“I wouldn’t snarl at you if you weren’t always late,” she said. “If you helped me and if I wasn’t so tired, maybe I would be more interested in sex. You only care about you and I have lost respect for you.”“Dr. McMillan, I’m supposed to want to come home to that. I would much rather prepare for a legal deposition.”The story of Ken and Casey is a combative version of entropy at work and a marriage with a negative balance of equal blaming.We assume that Ken and Casey’s young relationship once had a positive balance. We might imagine that Ken complimented and appreciated Casey for many of her attributes and gifts to him and Casey returned the favor. When stress came to their marriage, compliments given went unreturned. However, complaints and criticisms were returned and the balance found its lowest level.The force of balance powers this blame game. As Casey feels abandoned, rejected and disregarded by Ken, to compensate and find balance, she attacks, rejects, and loses respect for him hoping she makes him feel as low as she does. Then as Ken feels torn down, rejected and disrespected, he tears Casey down until he hurts her equally, a typical marriage cycle that continues to drive both parties down to their lowest common denominator. Life’s stresses keep coming, establishing a negative momentum.Cold War Disintegration: Tammy and SteveThe story of Tammy and Steve is the cold war version of creating a cyclical, plunging balance.Tammy said, “We don’t ever fight. We aren’t home together much at the same time. I am chairman of the Cancer Society. Most of the organization’s business is done in meetings after 6:00 P.M. And when the meeting is over, I usually hang around and deal with loose ends. When I get home I find Steve in bed watching ESPN. I hate sports. Usually I’ve already eaten. I buy frozen dinners for Steve or he picks something up on his way home from work. I can’t stand to go to bed with those sports announcers yelling. I usually go to sleep in the guest room. Steve doesn’t seem to care.”“I cared once,” Steve said, “before the birth of our second child, our daughter. The first was a boy. After the birth of our daughter, she announced the end of our sex life. She said that she never liked it. She only did it to get children. Now that she has a girl, she is no longer interested. Once the children entered school, she began her career as a do-good volunteer. She assumes that she can leave the childcare responsibilities to me when I get home from work. Our sixteen-year-old daughter has a car. We see her in the morning when she gets up and in the evening before she goes to bed. Our son attends college. Our children need money from us but not much else. Tammy and I don’t have much in common anymore. Perhaps we never did.”“Oh, we did at one time,” Tammy said. “But when the children came, Steve didn’t get it that our world had changed. He left me with diapers and the feedings. The constant demands of childcare all fell on me. I felt abandoned. And I was so angry at him.”“Did you say anything to Steve about this?” I asked.“No,” Tammy replied. “I just began building walls and avoiding him.”“And that’s what I did too,” Steve said. “And years later the walls are strong, thick and impenetrable.”The story of Tammy and Steve illustrate balance at work, anger begetting anger, silent blame and withdrawal creating a cycle of cold detachment. No, they didn’t fight or argue. Both were resigned to their fate, perhaps for the sake of their children, and the momentum of their anger grew into a detached, polite distance of shared disdain. When people try to be nice and avoid trouble, they put their relationships in the freezer. Without truth there is no passion. When truth is told, conflict will happen. At least conflict is interesting.Casey and Ken and Tammy and Steve are examples of balance, entropy and momentum at work. Life comes at them. Unexpected things happen and they are not prepared. Someone misunderstands, feels hurt by the other, and blames him/her for the hurt. Then, the other defends him/herself by blaming the first one. And Ken won’t come home because Casey is angry and sexually rejecting. Tammy avoids Steve because she feels shut out by him. And Casey is angry and sexually rejecting because Ken won’t come home and help. Steve is watching ESPN in part because Tammy seems disinterested in him. The negative momentum overwhelms them. Right now neither of them know how to do anything other than punch, defend and counterpunch. For Ken and Casey the punches and counterpunches are angry words. Tammy and Steve use withdrawal and indifference as their weapons. If an owner’s manual came with their relationship, it has been lost.We all share a great deal in common with Ken and Casey or Steve and Tammy. We have all been exhausted, felt unappreciated and taken for granted, looked to our mate as a place where we can lay blame, attacked back as we felt attacked, and allowed our relationship to find balance at its lowest point. We need help changing our momentum, learning how to make our relationship run smoothly and raising the balance into positive territory. We need to know how to fight entropy rather than each other.The Balance CompulsionWe humans have a need to create balance and equality in our relationships, whether balance exists or not. I’ve played this game. I expect you have too. Balance works as a constant force, like gravity. Just as water seeks its level, just as the stock market finds a trading range for stocks, couples will find balance. Couples may move toward a very low level, as Ken and Casey’s did or they may move toward a high level and offer honor and respect to both parties. But relationships will be balanced or tend toward balance. We should expect that as soon as we blame or tear down our mates, that the same will be coming back at us in their next breath.My wife served as a judge in many divorces. In cases where one party had clearly lost their moral compass (e.g., affairs, drugs, fraud, psychological and physical abuse) and the other party had remained loyal to the marriage until forced to let go, my wife often heard observers make comments like: “I wonder what her part in this mess was” or “There are always two sides.” Or “He married her. There must be something wrong with her too.”In the 1970s some therapists asked battered woman “What did you do to deserve this?” Michele Bograd pointed out that this use of balance or homeostasis as part of systems theory was harmful to families.Here, the therapist became part of a downward entropy system that seeks balance in pathology and perhaps death. In this case the therapist colluded with the battering husband to help him salvage his ego and pride at the expense of his wife. Such a marriage will find balance, as all systems do— but the balance will be in pathology, not health.Though our relationships may not descent into physical violence, we follow the same cycle downward with words like, “You are just as much to blame as I am” or “I wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t…” or “You started it.”When accused of a wrong, we often look for a balancing wrong in our partners to reestablish our equal standing in the relationship.An Hawaiian proverb describes the principle of balance this way:When we send our army of angry negative thoughts across the spirit bridge to our opponent, the army returns two-fold back across the spirit bridge to attack us.Said another way, our mates perceive our negative thoughts and feelings (spoken or not) and when they do, our mates defend against them. They use the force of our anger as their motivation to defend. When they defend, our anger returns to attack us along with their defensive anger. Then, we attack again and the cycle continues. All of this is done to try to find a place where we feel level, equal or balanced in our relationship.A 2007 episode of Grey’s Anatomy (an ABC network TV show) offers an example of balance at work. Dr. Grey, the female lead, lay in bed with Dr. Shepherd, the male lead. As she woke one morning, she saw that he had already awakened before the alarm and she asked him why. He resisted telling her but finally admitted her snoring awakened him. She took offense and retaliated by telling him that he had morning breath.Balance at Work: Ben and JaneIn a relationship we do what we can to protect our equal status with our partner. For those of us with poor impulse control and strong opinions, we may often find ourselves out of bounds, apologizing for one mistake or another. This may stand in contrast to our partners who rarely (or never, it may seem to us) apologize to us. In such relationships we have difficulty maintaining a positive view of ourselves. We may search for wrongs and character flaws in our partners in order to have a comparative basis to build our self-worth.Consider Ben and Jane. They came to me to help them work on their marriage.“Ben is so self-absorbed,” Jane said. “I know he has ADD and he takes medication for that. It helps some but he still forgets and does not think. He will fix himself a sandwich and never ask me if I want one too. Or he will go for a walk with the dog and I will ask him to bring in the paper on his way back and he forgets. He will run out of gas in his car because he doesn’t pay attention to his gas gauge. I can’t trust him to pick something up for me at the store on his way home because he will get distracted in the store with a sports magazine and come home with that and not the butter I absolutely needed.”“And this is what I’m married to,” Ben said, “nag, nag, nag, complain, complain. I can’t ever get it right. I do make mistakes. I apologize.”“But what good is an apology,” Jane interrupted, “if nothing changes?”“She never does anything wrong,” Ben replied. “I don’t think I have ever heard her say I’m sorry. Surely she has made a mistake sometime.”In the beginning, they were not balanced in their relationship. Jane thought once they married, Ben would be able to focus better, that she could help him. When they married, Ben didn’t know that his difficulty with attending was such a big deal. At the beginning they both laughed about his forgetfulness. But when the children were born, Jane wanted Ben to grow out of his attention deficit. She was constantly disappointed when he did not.“I try to overlook it,” Jane said, “I try to compensate. I get so tired of being the only family safety net.”Here we have Jane in the “better-than” position. We know what Ben is going to do. He will try to bring her down to his level. This is a lawful social maxim. We see it at work with our children, at clubs or church. When someone places themselves above others, the others will try to bring them down.This need to bring people down to our level exists in all of us. Because it does, our need for balance collaborates, dances and competes with this need in others. We may think of it as a mysterious force like gravity. And it is a force. Though balance may be a transcendent spiritual value (i.e., justice, fairness, equality), it is also a drive that operates like a compulsion. We cannot assume that balance actually exists in our relationships or in any other relationships. We can assume that we reflexively yearn to be at least equal to our partner and when we feel inferior, we search for negative attributes in our partners to regain balance.In Ben and Jane’s story they began their relationship out of balance. Jane was more organized than Ben. Ben believed that her better-than position relative to organization did not matter to their equal value. Jane believed that Ben would become more organized with time. Both were wrong.After years of struggle Ben and Jane became balanced in their relationship at a very low level. Ben remained forgetful but now Jane had become a constant complainer and fault-finder. Both did contribute to the pain of their relationship.Relationships do tend, over time, to become balanced. One partner can bring the other partner down to their level. But balance can also work in a positive direction. Consider these contrasts in balance.Contrasts in BalanceHere are examples of a low-balanced couple and a high-balanced couple.Imagine you, sitting in a restaurant and overhearing the couple’s conversation at a nearby table. The wife says to the husband:“That’s a stupid idea. You can’t leave me, two months pregnant and throwing up all the time, to go on a business trip now. You stupid, thoughtless, self-centered bastard.”The husband replies:“Stupid? You call me stupid? I did not drive my car with the engine light on until the engine burned up $3,000 later. I must make this sale. I don’t want to go. But we have got to have the money that this trip will make to pay to fix the car. And you call me selfish?”As you listen to this conversation you see in your mind this couple’s ship sinking. The wife’s fearful, blaming criticism balanced by the husband who matched her critical words with his own; creates a heavy dark spirit that surrounds and weighs heavy on the two people in this conversation. This couple may not make it.Imagine you overheard the conversation in this form. The wife says to the husband:“I am so proud of you for landing that contract. You worked so hard. And now that I’m two months pregnant we need the money. I’m not sure how I will make it without you when you go on your trip. You have taken such good care of me since I have been so nauseated.”The husband says:“You make me so proud of you. You quit smoking. You take good care of yourself. You read about babies and child development. You are going to be such a great mother. And I’m going to be such a proud father.”In this last example the emotional weight carried by each partner becomes lighter as they praise and honor each other. This respectful spirit surrounds and buoys both people. They used the balance force in a positive way.One simple action or attitude can transform the principle of balance or homeostasis into a force nurture and love.Imagine this scene.“You ate the cake I baked for tonight’s dinner party,” Anne said as she looks into the refrigerator. “You also ate the shrimp I planned to serve for an appetizer. What else did you eat?”“Well I was hungry,” Tom said. “If you had made me some lunch, I wouldn’t have eaten that.”So here you can see balance at work and the system going south. Tom is defending his pride from an accusation. This is as natural as waking up after sleep. It is what all of us are likely to do.But what if Tom had said:“Oh, I did. I was working in the yard and thinking about where I was going to plant the hostas. I was hungry and I didn’t think about the dinner party. My mistake. I will go right now and buy a new cake and pick up some more shrimp at Krogers.”When Tom resisted the instinct to defend and balance with blame, he opened the door to a new kind of balance. Tom took the high road. Anne is now more likely to join him there.She might say:“It’s okay. I should have told you about having the cake and the shrimp for the dinner party. I have some more shrimp in the freezer and you didn’t eat the whole cake. There is enough for dinner. I will serve it in individual pieces on saucers. That will work.”“But you won’t get to present that beautiful whole coconut cake,” Tom answers.“That’s okay,” Anne said. “I appreciate that you understand. I’ll have to do a better job of letting you know when the food in the fridge is not for you.”“And I will ask you before I chow down on something that is left in the refrigerator.”Imagine the difference in the melody of voices in these two conversations. When Tom did not fire back defensively, he helped make the second conversation possible. His words committed him to something beyond the defense of himself. He had the courage to look at his mistake and claim it. That made the difference.This book is about helping you build that strength. This will be the theme of this book, to avoid blaming, avoid the entitlements of innocence, pick up after yourself, clean up messes without looking for fault. If you are capable of this, you will become easier to love.EntropyLife is full of the unexpected and unpredictable and much of life’s unexpected surprises are not positive; the birth of a disabled child, the loss of a job, a sudden new responsibility, sickness, the loss of our cellphone, weather-related events, etc. Entropy wears down relationships. When entropy hits our relationships, we act like rats in a cage without enough food. Instead of attacking our cage, we attack each other.Now let’s consider what we can do to find some third force that will help us raise our balance, fight entropy and create a positive momentum so that our relationship works at its highest level and does not descend into meanness, pathology and even perhaps death.Entropy: Life HappensEnid and Ed married fifteen years ago both at the age to thirty. They put off having children until they were forty. When they had their son Charles, he was diagnosed with Williams syndrome. He is now five and unable to independently care for his basic needs.“We were happily married before Charles came,” Enid said. “I loved tending my gift shop and Ed was doing well working on the line at Nissan. We had time for a date night, some weekends away and vacations.”“Since Charles was born we have not had a date,” Ed said. “I work a second job because we need help with Charles. He requires constant attention. We need the income from Enid’s shop, but she has extra expenses for hiring help there to so she can be the main person to take care of Charles.“I paint houses as my second job and I met this sex addict interior decorator on a job. Enid and I hadn’t had sex in months. I jumped in bed with the decorator nymphomaniac immediately and knew it was a mistake. I told Enid, another mistake.”“I hurt my back lifting Charles,” Enid said. “I began taking Loritab. I got addicted to them. My mother died and she had been a great help at the store, with Charles and a support to me. I withdrew from Ed. I was so depressed. The pain pills made my depression worse.”And so on and so on. The stress of life overwhelmed Enid and Ed. Their lives had no room for mistakes; every mistake was magnified and made worse by the stresses in their lives. Life came at them so hard and fast that there was no space, time or resources available to them to heal or recover.This is entropy at work. Though the stress of our lives may a pale in comparison to Ed and Enid’s, life happens to us too. Sometimes it comes at us fast and furious and we too become lost and overwhelmed. What positive balance we had turns and the momentum increases downward.No one is to blame. We all have our version of workplace demands, disasters (natural, psychic and economic), and wars (of various sorts). We are all aging. Our friends and family dies. We suddenly don’t have money or we suddenly do and are overwhelmed by the choices it creates. Just because no one is to blame, however, does not mean that we do not blame the one we love. In fact, that is what we are most likely to do.When our self-esteem flags and we face failure, we look for someone to blame and that person is most likely to be the person who loves us the most. And entropy never stops. Unexpected change comes and comes. For a couple to dance together in the context of life’s chaos, they must have special skills, constructive habits and faith in one another.Rat experiments demonstrate that when you have two rats in a cage without enough food or under other stresses, they attack each other, rather than the cage that creates the problem.The Third Force, or One Plus One Equals ThreeHave you ever sat in a restaurant and played the game of guessing what people at other tables feel? (It is an impossible game watching one person dining alone, but much easier with couples.)With couples you can see in their faces and body language, the emotional energy or spirit around them. Imagine the young couple holding hands and leaning forward, talking, looking into each other’s eyes; or the older couple who are sitting comfortably in their seats eating, commenting on their food or sitting quietly, calmly enjoying their companionship; or the forty year old couple sitting with few words spoken between them, their sour looks creating a mirror for one another and the coolness that surrounds them. The woman is crying and the man looks so embarrassed that he wants to crawl under the table. I could go on and I expect you could, too.A relationship consists of three entities, the two people plus this alchemical third thing, their spirit. My friend and colleague, Steven Prasinos, makes this point by saying, “In a relationship 1+1=3.” The word “Coupleship” creates the image of the two people floating in a boat. The boat may float low in the water or float high in the water. The lower the spirit, the more emotional weight the relationship carries and the harder for the boat to move through the water. The higher the boat floats, the lighter it sits on the water and the easier the boat moves through the water.Two parts of the couple are obvious. There is the spirit of what one wants and this is often opposed by the spirit of what the other wants. The third entity gives us some other spirit to serve. Serving the third force helps a couple avoid win/lose power struggles. The third force may pull a couple together by offering each of them something to serve that transcends the individual parts of a couple. Our relationships benefit when we nurture this third entity, contribute reasons to help our partners believe in “us” and in the strength of the third entity, our couple’s spirit. One goal of this book is to help couples serve this third entity, to speak and behave in ways that add reasons to have faith in their bond and to lift their level of commitment, communication, and cooperation.We support this third element by committing to nurture it as much as we nurture our partner or even ourselves. This commitment to a spirit rises above the “you” and the “me” in a relationship. When we commit to nurturing this spirit, we discover the essential ingredient to a successful long term bond. The “we” and the “us” is more than the sum of “you” plus “me.” In a strong relationship both parties first ask, “How can I protect our spirit, put our ‘we,’ before what is best for ‘me’ or for ‘you’.” What is best for “us” surprisingly includes what is good for “me” and for “you.” We fight entropy and raise the balance when we serve the third force, our relationship’s spirit.For a relationship to survive entropy, keep its balance and maintain a positive momentum, it requires a mission—a third force that both parties serve. Missions can change. In the beginning it may be to share sexual pleasure, and it may change to nurturing children, and change again to healing the earth. But if there isn’t a shared mission, a reason to be together, the relationship will be difficult to maintain.EXERCISE #1:(a) When was the last time you were together, sitting across from one another holding hands? What created that moment? Write about this in your journal. Share your writings and reflect on this time together.(b) Reflect on other times you were together; silent times, cold times, times when one of you was hurt.(c) Describe your coupleship now. Write about that separately. Then share what you wrote. Talk about your impressions.Always remember if your conversation in an exercise in this book becomes painful or difficult, stop and continue this conversation in front of your therapist.Making the “We Commitment”Though relationships tend toward balance, some relationships fall deeply out of balance.If we imagine the example of two tennis players, there are times when the two tennis players on the court have such different levels of tennis skills that no practice will ever bring a balance to their talents as tennis players. A mature, responsible, able adult woman can marry a charming immature sociopathic man who will never match her capacity for integrity and she will never match his capacity for cruelty and manipulation.Glenda, an A-student, college junior is enamored with Bud, a charming man with a new BMW and a dark past. She enjoys their relationship until one night he tries to convince her to have sex with a man for money and she learns that Bud is a pimp.Emotional illnesses can strike one partner and not the other, creating an imbalance that can never be recalibrated. Gary married Angel when they were twenty-two. After the birth of their third child, Angel had post-partum depression that evolved into paranoid schizophrenia. She spent many years in hospitals. She regressed to the point of having the maturity of a five year old. Ten years after Angel was diagnosed as psychotic, Gary met and fell in love with Sandra. He never divorced Angel. He and Sandra lived together raising Gary’s children and taking care of Angel.An eating disorder or various addictions to sex, alcohol, spending or gambling can strike one partner and the other partner will suddenly become either their victim, their enabler, or their ex-partner. A mosquito with the West Nile Virus bit thirty-five year old Jean. The illness caused a very high intense fever. Some doctors conjectured that the fever injured her brain. This caused insatiable compulsion to consume. Jean was married to Carl, an auto mechanic. Carl suddenly found that his kitchen was empty of food, his credit cards maxed out and Jean weighed 250 lbs. He divorced her.In these situations the couple should consider terminating the relationship.But if the parties attempt to repair their relationship, they must re-enter the relationship and pick up the pieces together. If one of the partners ends an affair and re-enters the marriage still torn with strong feelings for the paramour, the relationship won’t heal if the other partner uses guilt to control and leverage their partner back into the relationship. Guilt always undermines desire. Guilt will not make a strong emotional bond. Consider these imagined conversations between Bob and Carol.Guilt and Commitment: Bob and Carol:“I was wrong. I know,” Bob said, “I can’t blame you. My father died. I began to drink more. I couldn’t face you and the kids. I avoided coming home as much as I could. Alice came along and you found out. I moved out. I want to come back home and I am afraid to at the same time.”Now let’s imagine this to be Carol’s response:“How do you think I feel, my husband with another woman? Do you know how humiliating that feels? I don’t want to divorce you but right now I don’t want you to ever touch me again. You lied, cheated and destroyed any trust that I ever had in you and in our marriage. How could you? And you still have feelings for her, don’t you?”“Yes,” Bob admitted.“And you think you can come home and still keep talking to her and seeing her?”“No.”“You are damn right you can’t. I don’t want to see your face as long as you still love her.”“Are you going to file for divorce?” Bob asked.“No, I don’t believe in divorce. It will never be me who files for divorce.”Is there any common ground on which Bob and Carol can build, given this response? What can Bob do?Yes, he can stop talking to Alice—but can he stop caring about her because Carol demands it? And don’t Carol’s demands make it harder for Bob to stop his addiction to his fantasy infatuation with Alice?Perhaps Bob will suddenly find a backbone and rediscover his integrity and honor, but consider the chances of a now alcoholic, infatuated, addicted Bob suddenly becoming able to tell the truth, and finding a truth to tell that pleases Carol. Won’t he just descend lower into his lying and manipulating without some help?Could Carol help? Now let’s consider how this story would play out if Carol responded this way:“Bob, this affair hurt me, our marriage, you and perhaps someone else. You had many better choices about how to grieve your father than running to alcohol and another woman. You can’t blame me for those poor choices.“The affair has left this marriage in an awful mess, with children and another woman in the middle of it all. You have now developed an addiction. You could lose your job. I have not been the perfect wife. I had our two children, became their mother and stopped thinking about what you needed. I just pretended that nothing had changed when you lost your father and that you didn’t need me. You did need me and I abandoned you.“We have made an awful mess together. I married you and I’m committed to fixing messes like this with you. You have lost your way. When I married you, you were an honest, good man who always told the truth. Now look at you, torn between me, your children, another woman and the bottle. You’re not the man I married. I want him back. I want to help you find that man again.“Bob, you must begin by telling the truth, make me your confidante, rather than Alice. Tell me your private thoughts. She knew everything. I have been kept in the dark. You must share your honest forbidden thoughts with me.”“I’m not sure that you would like that,” Bob answered. “Do you want to hear that I miss Alice, that I still have sexual fantasies about her, that I am afraid of you?”“Hearing those things hurts,” Carol admitted.“Well, those things are part of my truth and I think they will be until I have more strength to fight my addictions,” Bob said. “I will understand that you may hurt too much to hear my truth. And if you cannot, then divorce me because I agree with you I need to stop lying and tell and live the truth.”“I want you to tell me the truth,” Carol said. “I see that when you trust me with your truth, good and bad, that you honor me as your confidante and trusted partner.“I think I can hear your truth, if you keep your promises. Everybody feels, thinks and fantasizes. While I may not like some of yours, I understand that you still have feelings for Alice, but I need to be able to trust that you will not act on them.”“But what if the truth is that I have a powerful urge to be with her?” Bob asked.“I don’t know what I can do about that.”“You can ask me to tell you about these feelings and you can accept them without making me feel guilty,” Bob said.“Yes, I can do that. And maybe I can go talk with Alice,” Carol said with an inquisitive look on her face. “After all you lied to Alice and manipulated her, too. She needs the truth. I would like to talk to her, reassure her that I don’t blame her, suggest that if we both know what you tell the other one, you will have to choose one of us. That way your lies won’t work. I can ask her to join me in the adult world that faces reality and tells the truth. I can say that our connection as two women, two sisters, whom you treated badly and lied to should count for something. While this may not stop your lying, you will have to find another person or persons to lie to.”“I want to fight for you and my marriage. In fact this idea of talking to Alice feels good to me that I can do something to help. I would like to talk with Alice. I’m not sure we can be friends but we could tell each other the truth. I need that. I hope she will talk to me.”Either partner in the Bob/Carol story can contribute their strength and begin the healing process. Bob can develop a spine, leave Alice, re-commit to Carol and take his punishment until Carol gets tired of her resentment and need for revenge and returns Bob’s commitment and love.Or Carol can bring her strength and contain her feelings, put her hurt pride aside and hear and respect Bob’s truth without retaliating.Bob could make some progress using what strength and integrity that he can muster and then Carol can contribute what strength she has to contain her hurt pride. Together, with help, they may be able to heal their marriage.Tall orders for all parties. But what won’t work is one party blaming the other, claiming innocence and waiting until the other partner fixes what was broken. To heal the relationship after such damage, aggrieved parties must rejoin the “we,” claim the mess as theirs, do what they can to help clean things up, and rejoin their shared mission. The people who follow this path choose a “better or for worse relationship” and are not afraid of emotional work.For many couples such ordeals, as the one described above, can serve as an initiation into a deeper, more profound relationship. Often couples become grateful because surviving such a trauma made them stronger and more confident in one another and in the strength of their commitment.Changing the Momentum: Mike and Beth AnnMike, a local doctor, came to see me for our fifth session.“I’m feeling better,” he said. “I was depressed but I’ve done my homework. I used that ritual you gave me from your book Emotion Rituals and I’m doing better.“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, unsure about the sudden flight into mental well-being.“I haven’t told my wife what I’m doing,” he said. “She noticed me in a better mood. We were playing bridge with another couple, usually an occasion for us to bicker. One of us finds fault with the other. After she lays her cards down on the table as the dummy, I usually begin my assault. I might use the word “dummy” to refer to her opening bid, when in bridge “dummy” is the word used to identify the player who lays down their hand for all players to see as the tricks are played out.“After whatever snide remark I might make, she comes back with her version of a nasty comment about me.“On that night, I didn’t play that game. I was quiet. I watched as the other couple danced their version of this negative, angry, sarcastic dance. It seemed so natural. They both seemed to take no offense. It was what, before this therapy, I would have called “teasing” or “mean words meant in fun” or “just play.” But in my new emotional space, it seemed different. I usually played my version of this game with my wife. I didn’t want to this night. My wife fired her shot to invite me to join the communal bickering. I don’t remember which of my many faults she nominated for me to defend. Whatever it was, I didn’t respond.“I found myself detached, observing, playing cards but not joining into the defense of men and me, or the attack of women and my wife. It was strange. My wife began to slow down her attacks. The other couple continued with a vengeance. Probably this spirit of vengeance was what my wife and I used to feel and express. From this new observing position, the game seemed mean, silly and unnecessary.“I didn’t feel any closer to my wife but I didn’t go home as angry and closed down as I have felt after an evening of cards with our friends. And she said that I was different that night and she enjoyed me.”“I wonder,” I asked, “What it would be like if you played the game with compliments and affirmations for your wife and not criticisms?”“I really don’t have much good to say about the insensitive bitch,” he said. “She is fat. Her hair is thinning. Her breasts fall to her navel. She is lazy, insipid and boring. All she does is whine.”“So are you saying,” I began, “that this woman to whom you have been married for thirty years, who bore your children, tended them for you, accompanied you to boring events with your extended family, cooked and created a home for you has nothing about her that is good that you can notice and acknowledge? If that is true, then I don’t think she is the one at fault.”“I see your point. Surely there are good things about her.”“Once you are joined in this battle of critical barbs, you see her as against you. As you defend yourself against her, you gather facts that you can use to devalue her. Once you begin this, your perception becomes distorted. You thrust every bit of information you come across about your wife into evidence against her, your adversary and eventually there is nothing about her that you see as good.“It is not your wife to whom you are married. You are not married even to a person. You are married to a negative downward critical process of tearing down your opponent. How unfortunate for this poor woman, who is your wife, that she has become the target of your attacks. And it is just as unfortunate for you that you have become the target of her attacks.”“Oh my God,” he said. “You are right. What has happened to my marriage? It is not her fault. It is not my fault. We are an old married couple. I thought about leaving and starting with someone else but I can’t afford a divorce and I’ve lost my libido. I would disappoint.“But now, I see that if I did start over with someone else, in time I would end up in this same place. Because this is what marriage is.”“No,” I said. “This is what marriage is without an owner’s manual. It is what happens in a car when the power steering leaks and you don’t fix it. It is what happens when you don’t change the oil. Marriages need regular maintenance too.“Human brains are organized to focus on things that go wrong, to look for fault and to place blame away from ourselves onto someone else.“Our brains are not organized to notice the good, to praise, acknowledge, appreciate, apologize, forgive, listen, really listen, to share and offer compassion before blame—essential things to the maintenance of a relationship. We have to learn these unnatural skills and practice them if we want our relationship to avoid becoming an old wreck.”“So there is something we can do about this?” Mike asked.“Yes,” I answered, “but you can do something if you want with or without her help. You can look for the good in your wife, mention it to her, acknowledge that this good part of her matters to you and appreciate her for it. You can change the music of your voice from sarcastic and cynical to praising and appreciating.“Just as you have noticed that spending time in a compassionate space rather than an angry place feels better to you, this affirmative appreciation will feel better too. That is the best reason to raise your eyes from what’s wrong, poor-me, blaming place into the what’s right, appreciation, praising place. You don’t bring yourself to this place to manipulate your wife into appreciating you. That may eventually happen, but if that’s your motivation, you will be disappointed and angry at her if it doesn’t. And you will be drawn back to a responding in kind, tit-for-tat negativity.”“So a relationship is like a car,” Mike said in a contemplative voice. “I haven’t had a clue what it needed. Our marriage didn’t come with an owner’s manual and I am certainly not trained as a mechanic. I don’t have the tools and I’m not sure I can stay in this positive place you are talking about without help.”Mike did get help. His marriage needed tending. We continued working on giving him the tools he needed to control his anger. Then he invited his wife to join in this work. She came and they began raising their balance together, fighting entropy and building habits that carried their positive momentum.Mike learned that our naturally negative brains can become entropy’s best tool. When our brains look for what’s wrong, we find it and we join entropy in tearing down our partner and our relationship. We forget about the good things in our partners and in our lives.When we turn our minds away from our negative tendencies and discover, notice and acknowledge what is right and good about our partner and our life, we fight entropy, raise our balance and change our momentum.EXERCISE #2:Think about your partner. List the good things about him/her that you appreciate. Try saying things to your partner several times this week. See if you like yourself better and enjoy the praising role. Reflect on how you feel as you do this. Write about your feelings.Relationships Can Help Us Grow UpIf we bring even a small amount of maturity to the relationship, whenever we act from this mature self, we begin to challenge our own character flaws and grow our soul.As we play together in love, we grow and move up a notch in our level of maturity. Then we challenge our partner to move up and join us. Unfortunately, we sometimes become smug. We think we know or we think we have arrived. That’s when our partner passes us and goes up a notch without us. They challenge us to face ourselves, feel the shame that is a natural part of hurting someone we love, grow with that shame and climb the ladder to join them. The great thing about life and relationships is that we can move up this ladder as long as we live. Soulmates do not agree with us, they challenge us.Earlier, I noted the importance of each partner bringing maturity and the ability to cooperate and co-create to the relationship. And I noted that few of us come to relationships psychologically mature. All of us bring our character flaws to our friendships.What then comes from a relationship with two immature partners? The answer is that our relationship struggles challenge us to mature.Remember our image of visualizing the spirit of couples in a restaurant. The poet John O’Donohue goes evens further and says he believes our soul exists outside our skin. The soul encompasses us rather than residing inside of us. He believes also that we all have a way to almost instantly sense this soul energy of another person. We can tell a frightened, anxious soul from a soul of courage and hope, and a young, impatient soul from an old soul. Can you imagine how the privilege to love another and serve a relationship might change our soul? Can you imagine what happens to that soul when it loves?Some of us fear that our identity might be lost in a committed relationship. Considering what love, dedication and commitment can do to build our character, it seems reasonable to believe that a relationship can expand our personal identity rather than confine it. Loving another and serving a relationship provides a gift that gives to us as much as it gives to our partner.Good couples’ therapists shine the light on the strengths in each partner—and especially on the strengths they have as a team, helping them look for what’s right instead of what’s wrong. That does not mean, however, that we avoid the dark side of the people who consult us. In order to grow, all of us must look honestly at ourselves in the mirror. For a couple this is especially important.If good therapists help partners avoid pointing fingers and blaming the other, what are we to do with the darkness in the partners that we confront?As we discourage finger pointing, we encourage confessions. We want to challenge partners to take on their own emotional weight, avoid claiming innocence and keep finding things in themselves they can improve. Each person is responsible for their own darkness.As therapists, we should keep one partner from attacking the other. At the same time, we should encourage partners to point to their partner’s strength with compliments, acknowledgements and expressions of gratitude. Therapists can challenge couples to make it a habit to confess, compliment and acknowledge. This means helping couples focus on their partners’ best selves as they contain the darkness of their own worst selves. This requires abandoning the search for equality or dominance or status and instead focusing on how to become a better partner.Of course, we hope the power we give away to those we love is returned in equal measure, and when one partner consistently absorbs the love and adoration of the other, without offering the same in return, the relationship will eventually become dysfunctional. It may find balance, but the balance will have a painful, ugly foundation; or balance will be gained as its momentum leads toward the end of the relationship.The Past: Vern and ShirleyHarville Hendrix proposes a familiar theory and a therapy for couples to find a path to healthy balance. He terms this approach “Imago.” This therapy focuses on one’s past to help explain the problems we have in our present relationships. Though there is some virtue in this, sometimes it may do more harm than good, if not used carefully. The story of Vern and Shirley makes this point.“I want to know why she keeps blaming me for things I don’t do,” Vern said. “I think it comes from how her father treated her and then there’s her ex-husband who assumed that Shirley was married but that he wasn’t. He didn’t even wear a wedding ring when he traveled. Shirley was none the wiser until she got a sexually transmitted disease. She divorced him and now she’s paranoid. She accuses me of seeing other women and I don’t. She accuses me of not caring about her, when I do. She thinks she is fat and ugly and she isn’t.”“So what you are saying is that she is crazy,” I said.“Well yes,” he admitted, “but I thought you might use a more professional term like paranoid or insecure or neurotic.”“And if I agree with you that she’s crazy, will that help you?” I asked.“Well yes,” he said then he contradicted himself and said, “Well no, it will help Shirley and that will help our marriage and that will help me.”“Shirley, I agree with Vern,” I said. “You are crazy. And if it would help for me to use other words, I will. You are paranoid, anxious and neurotic. Does that help you, Shirley?”“No,” Shirley said. “But it helps Vern make me the problem and avoid the blame. I think Vern…”“Is crazy?” I asked interrupting her.“Well, yes.”“Before we get into Vern being crazy,” I said. “I want to get back to you, Vern, about how knowing Shirley is crazy will help us here.”Vern quickly answered, “Can’t you take Shirley back into her past and help her see that the reason she is so insecure has to do with her father and her ex-husband and not with me? I’m not the bad guy here. I love her. I want her to realize that and I thought you could help her.”“Okay,” I said. “Let’s see if this helps you, Shirley. You are crazy. The reasons come as much or more from your past as they do from your present. Vern is not to blame for most of your fears. Is that helpful?”“No,” Shirley said. “I know this. I told Vern this. He got all his information that he uses to attack from me. I know I need help. But Vern is crazy too.”“Oh I know that,” I said, “I am crazy, too. All of us have character flaws. We will be working on them for a lifetime.”“But Vern doesn’t think he does,” Shirley said, “Vern thinks he’s perfect. And all our problems are because I’m crazy because of my father or my ex-husband. But ask him why he hasn’t had sex with me in three weeks. I’ll tell you. It’s because I told his mother we weren’t going to her home for Christmas, that and he lost $100,000 in the stock market. His sex drive seems to fluctuate with the Dow Jones. When things don’t go well for him, he withdraws from me, has little to say, won’t talk about what’s bothering him. And he’s says I’m crazy.”“Vern,” I said, “when you and Shirley came to see me, you told me that you were Christians and you wanted to be sure that I was too. You were more comfortable with me as a therapist if I was a Christian. I told you I was. Remember?”“Yes,” Vern said.“Well I’m not sure the faith of a therapist matters as to what kind of therapist they are. But as a Christian, isn’t it part of your faith that you confess before God in prayer that you know you mess up and that you often don’t do the right thing because something inside isn’t right? The word in church is “sinner” and most churches have a time in each service where sins are confessed. Don’t you admit that you have problems and that you are not perfect?”“Not to me he doesn’t,” Shirley interjected. “He’s got an ex wife and a mother and father. He has a past that makes him the way he is.”“Shirley, let me talk to Vern,” I said.“Yeah,” Vern acknowledged. “I’m a sinner. I’m not perfect. I’m not sure it’s my past though. I’ve always been the way I am. If I was hurt, I got quiet. I was that way when I was two years old. My mother will tell you. When I skinned my knee, I didn’t cry much. And I didn’t want someone to make a fuss over me. I tolerated my mother putting ointment and a band-aid on my scrapped knee and I went to my room.”“So will it help you to have a label for your craziness?” I asked.“Conflict avoidant,” Shirley shouted. “Passive aggressive.”“Borderline histrionic,” Vern replied under his breath.“So you’ve done some research, I see,” I said. “Do any of these words help either of you?”“No,” they both said at once.“And does it matter why you are crazy?”“Not really,” Shirley said.“I guess not,” Vern agreed.“I want to be real clear here,” I said, “I’m a wounded healer. I have character flaws that affect my marriage. And I will work on them for a lifetime, just like you.”“So what do we do, Doctor?” Vern asked. “It sounds like you are saying we are beyond help.”“No, I’m not saying that,” I said. “But name calling and blaming don’t help. Too often, we use the past as a weapon. I don’t want to do that here. You both came here because you both contribute to the problems of the relationship. Can we agree on that?”“Yes,” they said.“So what can you do for us?” Shirley said.“I can teach you some relationship skills,” I said. “Just like a dance teacher can teach you new dance steps or a music teacher can teach you new chords or a golf instructor can teach you how to grip a golf club. There are things that, if you knew to do them, could make a great difference in your skills to love and care for each other. And if you practice these skills, they will become habits, making love easier.”“What good will these skills do for us if we are still crazy?” Vern asked.“They will keep your character flaws out of your way,” I said. “But the skills won’t take away your personality problems. They will help some with your sanity. They help us have better relationships and that helps. They will stop the blaming and name calling and that will help. The skills will not change who we are. They will just change how we behave toward each other. Just like in dancing, music or golf, to improve at these things, you require instruction and practice, lots of practice. With practice, we all get better.”Couples therapy could become a venue to prosecute your partner for their past. That doesn’t mean that an examination of the past cannot help us in our relationships. It can. But it is safer to do this work individually. If the couple’s therapy environment is safe, then the past can be explored there, but couples’ therapists need to explore the past with care.Teaching relationship skills to couples is always a productive use of the couple’s therapy forum. Couples leave the session with things each person can practice. The skills generalize beyond the couple’s relationship into work, parenting and friendships.Though the past can become a weapon used by our partner against us, it is very useful in teaching us who we are and how we can become a responsible partner. Among the lessons we can learn from our past is that we have personal deficits. We need alliances with people who are different from us. This awareness is a seed of maturity. This seed can grow and flourish in a relationship.EXERCISE #3:Have you had trouble leaving the past in the past? What would help you let the past go?Chapter Three will have some tools to help you do this.Fighting Entropy and Changing the Momentum of BalanceBalance as a force in relationships often operates in a downward spiral. One partner blames, the other partner defends with blame and down they go. If one of the partners becomes internally imbalanced and feels “less than,” the relationship will begin moving toward a negative balance. Or the relationship will lose its balance if either party, for whatever reason, focuses internally on their own personal poor-me story without recognizing the other partner has reasons to feel hurt as well.”Balance can work as a positive force in relationships when one or both parties are focused on serving the relationship’s spirit—that third part. When we focus on serving and protecting the relationship’s spirit rather than ourselves, it becomes easier for us to see past our partner’s angry, hurt, blaming worst self, to the good, well-intended person we know them to be. With one or both parties internally balanced, it becomes easier to resist the temptation to respond in kind to negative attacks. Said another way “if you want peace, be peace.”Our competitive quest for equality or balance becomes an unfortunate detour. We all have character flaws and that is where we need to work. We can never change another person. When we focus on nurturing our relationship, balance works as a force to bring both partners into their best selves and the relationship’s positive momentum is maintained.If both partners are internally balanced and externally focused on doing right by their relationship, then balance will only rise and their spirit will only grow stronger. The purpose of this book is to aid in the positive use of balance in relationships. Kindness begets kindness.I attended a wedding presided over by Father O’Farrell, a Baltimore priest. He had an interesting version of the Adam and Eve story. In his version a bite from the apple taught Adam and Eve how to avoid responsibility, blame the other and keep score to protect their individual appearance of innocence.God came to them and said, “Look, if you want to be the innocent one and keep score, you will have to leave the Garden of Eden. But if you can agree to forget about blaming, score-keeping and innocence, then you can stay.”Of course, Adam and Eve could not stop themselves from looking for balance and keeping score. Father O’Farrell’s point was we cannot always stop either. But when we can stop the tit-for-tat game, when we can place responsibility onto ourselves rather than push it off onto the other, when we stop protecting our egos, we catch glimpses of paradise. We begin to use the balance principle in another way. We honor, praise and nurture without hoping to get back something in return. And when we give up expecting a tit for our tat, we often get so much more. Giving up our expectation of getting in return for our gifts requires courage and self-confidence. It requires a shift of focus away from ourselves and away from the other to a third force. Few of us have the wisdom to attempt this and fewer of us know how. This book honors those who do make such an attempt and it provides them helpful tools in their journey together.Perhaps this Nancy cartoon from the Nashville Tennessean, January 30, 2010, makes the point better than my words.Practice RequiredThe chapters that follow are the practical parts. Therapists will need patience. Clients will need a strong desire and commitment to get better. Couples must practice what they are learning. It will take lots of practice. However, like dancing, if couples have a passion for learning to love their partners and they practice, these steps will become second nature, a love habit.Often couples come to therapy after years of marriage in a low balance with a negative momentum, beaten down by entropy. They remember the first stage when they were “crazy” about each other. They wonder what has happened to their partner, who now seems to be crazy but not about them. They feel angry and discouraged and yearn for the feelings they had when they first met.Most of us are aware that the passions of the infatuation stage are not going to be part of the future. But a stronger, more realistic bond could grow in these relationships. They have the parts and the ingredients. They simply need the skills and the recipes to help them find healthy ways to feed one another and their relationships and make loving a habit.Please excuse my multiple metaphors—but imagine a couple as a warm ball of plastic passing through a structured process then finding themselves coming out at the other end as a useful part of a car or a constructive team working on their shared mission.Or imagine a couple trying to change a tire with only their hands and teeth. How much easier does changing the tire become when they are handed a lug wrench and a jack?This book will give you structures that can discipline both parties into constructive, adaptive, cooperative problem solving. It will give you tools that will make relationship repairs much easier.Once a couple finds these tools and practices these skills, they will create a shared history of accomplishments that will make them a proud team with a positive momentum. That sense of shared accomplishment and competence will have a basis in reality that they can rely on and believe in. This feeling and these habits, while not as exciting as the feelings of infatuation, are healthier and longer lasting.The purpose of this book is to teach us how to use the balance principle, to learn how to notice and fight entropy, and to develop habits that make it easy to create a positive momentum. Abstract ideas like “what goes around comes around,” “if you want peace, be peace,” and “kindness begets kindness” provide ways of thinking but they do not provide ways of acting. Chapter Two will help couples discover and acknowledge dysfunctional traps that can create a negative momentum. The third chapter begins the practical skill building part of the book. There we will resume our fight against entropy, our quest to raise the balance in our relationships, and build positive lifelong loving habits. The following chapters begin the teaching of what to do to put relationships in a positive balanced frame and keep them there. Once these habits are established, maintaining a loving relationship will become easier.

Chapter 2: Bad Habits, Page 11

When the Distancer/Pursuer Role Becomes a Habit: Deana and PeteThe predicament of the pursuer is illustrated in the title of George Gershwin’s first published song, When You Want Em, You Can’t Get Em.Deana and Pete are in my office.Deana began, “I had an affair because I wanted you to find out,” Deana said. “I hoped that you would get a backbone, stand up for yourself and divorce me.Pete responded, “I know it is my fault Deana had an affair. I am too demanding. I want too much of her time. I am too needy. That is what Deana says. But I love her so much. I don’t know what I would do without her.”“There he goes again,” Deana interrupted. “Pete, you are so pathetic. It’s disgusting. I am so tired of you always crowding me. I had an affair because I thought it would drive you away. I don’t want to be responsible for making you happy. It’s too much. Why don’t you get a life? Surely there is something that you can enjoy other than sitting with me on the couch watching sports. Sports bore me. You bore me.”“Its sports or it’s the way I sit or it’s that I use a toothpick to pick my teeth,” Pete said. “We can watch Oprah. That doesn’t suit you. You don’t like my hair so I shave my head for you and now you say I’m an old bald man. I take you out to eat, or I cook, and you still would rather eat with your friends, not me.”“Well at least I have friends,” Deana said.“I know it’s my fault that our relationship is not working,” Pete said. “I should have more friends. I’m not in very good physical shape either, but I’m working on that.”“Maybe that would help,” Deana said. “I don’t know. I just wish you weren’t such a clinging vine. You call me everyday three times a day.”“I know I do,” Pete says, “It’s only to remind you of how much I love you.”“Ugh,” Deana said. “You are disgusting.”Pete turned to me and asked, “What do we do, Dr. McMillan? I don’t seem to have anything to offer to Deana.”“Once you did,” I said. “Once I’ll bet she enjoyed your attention.”“Yes, I did once,” Deana admitted. “He wouldn’t give up. He kept pushing until I gave in. That’s what he does. He is always selling himself to me. He never leaves any space for me. He is always trying to convince me to love him, telling me how much he loves me and making me feel guilty.”“So Pete you need to back up,” I said. “Turn your attention to something else. Don’t call her at work. Don’t try to please her. Stop trying to get her to love you. Have some self-confidence that if you withdraw, Deana might wonder where you are and come looking for you.”“I’m not that kind of person,” Pete said. “I sell for a living. I have a persistent personality. I keep coming back. If I stop pursuing Deana, she will just leave me.”“So what if she does?” I asked. “Right now you continue to lose your dignity. Why would you want to be in such an insulting relationship? If you don’t think that Deana loves you, why stay?”“Because I am not strong enough to let go,” he admitted. “I don’t know what I would do without her.”“Well, you need to find out,” I said. “If you don’t get a life beyond Deana and develop some self-confidence, you will surely lose this relationship. And if you do withdraw, get a life and the relationship ends, you have a good start on moving into a new life.”“What can Deana do?” Pete asked.“I’m not sure Deana wants to do anything to keep this relationship alive,” I said.“Oh, maybe I do,” Deana said. “I’m not sure.”“Deana, you also have a crisis of self-confidence like Pete. While Pete is afraid of being alone you see closeness with Pete as a black hole that will suffocate your spirit. You create emotional distance to protect your individuality and to challenge Pete to develop a self.”“Yes that’s exactly right,” Deana said.“But Deana,” I said, “instead of giving Pete space to develop a separate self, you seem to be tearing down his confidence. Instead of protecting your autonomy, you seem to be caught in a reflexive cycle reacting to Pete, rather than moving toward your own goals.”“But I don’t have any special talents or goals,” Deana said. “And part of me enjoys the fact that Pete really wants to be with me.”“So you use Pete’s passion as your engine,” I said. “You get your energy by reacting to Pete. As you reject him, you find your passion. What would happen if you developed your own personal set of passions?”“What has happened to us is that we’ve grown apart,” Deana said. “Life has just led us in different directions. We don’t fit together anymore.”“That is just nonsense,” I said. “Nobody fits with anybody. Everybody is different. Men and women are certainly different. A relationship requires integrity, commitment and work. The fit is a constant problem that no relationship really solves. Deana, you can give up and that’s fine. We all have limits and we have a right to them. But don’t pretend that there is nothing you can do to make this relationship better.”“So what can I do?” Deana said defensively.“You can claim your part. That would help,” I said.“All right,” Deana said in an angry voice. “Yes, I find fault with you, Pete, when I shouldn’t. Things you do that I used to love you for now drive me nuts. I admit it. It’s not you. It’s me. I do want you to grow up and stop living for my approval. But I have to grow up and stop blaming you for my unhappiness. I am every bit as lost in this marriage as you. And I have been afraid to admit that.”“Now” I said. “If Pete can be still or move back and allow some space— and Deana, if you can can continue to tell your truth and move toward Pete— this relationship has a real chance for change.”This is how the distancer and the pursuer can change their relationship. Each can act against type and do the opposite of what they are comfortable doing. The relationship shifts when both parties accept responsibility. Overt and covert powers now become the same. Pete had the covert power of being the long-suffering good guy to Deana the witch. Though he didn’t say this openly, that is what both Pete and Deana felt at some level.Deana had overt power and seemed to be the dominant partner because her words ruled, but she never felt good about having this much power. She hated herself for abusing it. She wanted to stop but didn’t know how.Once Pete accepts her challenge to stand on his own two feet and once she stops using Pete’s faults to avoid facing her fears about herself, the relationship will grow and the roles will become fluid once again. 

Chapter Three: Making Listening a Habit, Page 27

Turning Toward: Kat and SamAs we listen, we should always turn toward people and provide them with the clear message that we are giving them our undivided attention.Consider the story of Kat and Sam.“He doesn’t pay any attention to me when I talk,” Kat said. “It’s like talking to a wall. He is always doing something else. When I began to talk to him I want him to turn off the computer, listen to me and look at me.”“I listen to you,” Sam said. “I don’t have to look at you to listen to you. I hear what you say. I’m busy. I’ve got lots to do at work and at home. I don’t like sitting still when I have things to do. I have reports to read. I have animals to tend to on the farm, and firewood to chop for the stove. I like being able to sit down and read the paper. I have email to read and answer. I have no time to just sit and talk.”“And how do you think that makes me feel?” Kat asked. “You have time to wake me up in the middle of the night and make love.” She paused, looked up at the ceiling and continued, “Make love is the word I like to use, but I’m just fooling myself. No love is made by your late-night pokes. How can anyone feel loved unless they are looked at, noticed, acknowledged, understood, recognized? I need your eyes. I need you to turn toward me when I talk. You do the opposite.You were on the bed once, not yet up and I was brushing my teeth. I came back into the bedroom and began to talk to you, and you know what you did? You immediately got up and went to get the paper outside. My speaking to you, my asking you for attention seems to be your cue to find a way to avoid listening to me. I want someone to look at me when I speak.“Sex for a man begins and ends with genital contact. If it’s good sex it may last thirty minutes. Sex for a woman begins with the eyes. Every time his eyes look at her with interest or desire, a woman gets more excited. As a man’s eyes continue to honor her with their attention, a woman wants to share more of herself.“As a woman, I need your eyes. As your wife, I need your eyes. As a person you respect, I need you to attend to me when I speak. Call me crazy if you want. I will always be hurt when you turn away from me.”“I don’t get it,” Sam said. “We are both busy. You know I love you. I wouldn’t do all I do for you if I didn’t love you. Dr. McMillan, why should eye contact matter when I hear what she says?”“I don’t think that you really do hear what she says, if you aren’t looking at her when she speaks,” I said.“I think I do,” he replied.“Well that may be true,” I said. “Kat can give you another test by simply asking you to repeat what she just said the next time you have such a conversation. But eye contact helps all of us listen better. Whether or not you get all that Kat says when you speak is not the point. The point I’m making is that your eyes help you listen.“The point Kat is making is a different one. And that is your eyes matter to her. There is research that has been donw with infants on eye contact. In the research it is called “mirroring.” Infants can fail to thrive and die without it. It is essential to the infant’s psychological well-being. If this is true for infants, it must also be true for adults. Kat says it important to women and further she says it matters a great deal to her.”“I don’t want to live in a relationship in which I’m ignored,” Kat said. Kat makes the point that we all need attention and that where people focus their eyes tells us where their attention is. Research about multi-tasking seems to indicate that our brains are organized to focus on one thing at a time. And men especially have trouble focusing on more than one thing. Your eyes simply help you stay focused. They are another sensory channel receiving and reinforcing the input from our auditory channels. 

Chapter Four: Accountability, Page 18

Accountability Begins With Us: Frank and Diane Often the work we need to do will focus on ourselves and our own poor coping strategies.Frank and Diane came to see me. Diane was suicidal.“I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “I can’t say anything to Frank about what’s bothering me. He is so clueless. Our son John is ADD and Frank expects him to pay attention the first time. Then Frank yells. This happens constantly.“My job keeps me away from home.  I travel for a cosmetic firm. So I have to leave John at home with Frank alone. I know it is bad. I have no right to say anything because I’m leaving Frank with all the responsibility. And Frank is a good father. He just does not understand John and what he needs. Frank is better with our older daughter than I am and I know it. But I understood John and Frank doesn’t. I feel so guilty because I’m not there for John. I can’t please anybody no matter what I do. That’s why I want to die.”“Frank,” I said. “How do you see John? Do you agree with Diane in how she sees him?”“Yes I do,” Frank said. “And she is much better with John than I am.”“Can you move over and let her have more say in how John is parented?” I asked.“Sure,” he said.I said, “It seems you have Frank’s permission to take the lead here.”“Well, I want John to go to a school where he is not compared to his sister. That’s the first thing,” Diane said. “Then in the summer I want to send John off to camp so that he doesn’t have to be at home competing with his sister and so he can be more appropriately and patiently challenged than we can do at home. Is that all right with you, Frank?”“Yes,” Frank agreed. “That would be fine.”“So,” I said addressing Diane. “This wasn’t as hard as you imagined. What would your son have done if you had killed yourself? Look at how you may have just changed his life. You will see that he gets more of what he needs. Your son may owe a lot to this day. How do you feel about yourself now?”“Good,” she said.“How do you feel about Frank?” I asked.“Good,” she answered. “I’m remembering all the reasons I married him. He is not afraid of criticism. He has always had respect for me.”“Now, I’m going to do something mean,” I said. “I want to show you something about yourself and Frank. Do I have your permission? It is not serious and I don’t mean what I’m going to say. I don’t even believe it. But even with this disclaimer, I think you will see my point. Can you trust me here?”“I guess so,” Diane said. Frank nodded his assent.“Your son is eight years old,” I said. “And you are now doing the things for him that would help him. But where have you been? Why didn’t you stand up for him before? Why have you waited until now? What is wrong with you? What kind of mother are you?”Then I stopped, paused for a moment. Diane’s head was down. She was not looking at me.Then I asked her. “How do you feel about yourself?”“I hate myself.”“How do you feel about Frank?”“I hate him too.”“I didn’t mean any of those words,” I said. “But they are already in your head. That inner voice often speaks to you, and when it does, you turn on yourself. And when you turn on your self-hatred button, you also turn on the hating-Frank button.”“You’re right about that,” Diane agreed.“Now watch again,” I said. “Imagine your son John at age thirty coming to you and saying ‘The best thing that ever happened to me was going to Camp Watuga. It changed my life. And the next best thing was when you decided to send me to a school different than the one my sister had attended. You just always seemed to know what I needed. You are a great mom.’ Now how do you feel about yourself?”“I feel better,” she said.“And how do you feel about Frank?”“I love him again,” she said. “This is exactly what happens to me. I go up and down so quickly and my world changes from dark/bleak to light/happy and back again.”“Diane, you are a very successful person,” I said. “Top sales rep in the whole country. You make over $500,000 a year. You were the lead in your school play. You were athlete of the year in your hometown. You made great grades. You were top in your class in marketing in college. I know how you do this.”“How?” Frank asked.“Diana uses self-hatred to motivate herself,” I said. “She attacks herself to intimidate and scare herself into performing above and beyond. Giving everybody 150% leaves nothing for herself. This reinforces her hatred of herself because we are all dark and irritable when we are exhausted. Her tank runs on empty. The life she has created for herself is a miserable life.“Remember, once, Frank, when you were defending yourself and you raised your voice in here with me at Diane and she fell apart.”“I remember that,” Frank said.I said, “When your voice is raised and critical, it turns on her own critical voice and when your critical voice joins hers, she is being yelled at.”“’That’s right,” Diane said. “I have always been super sensitive. And I have always been super-hard on myself. That is how I’ve achieved what I have. Frank, it’s not you that has to change. I know that it’s me.”“Well that’s not exactly true,” I said. “Frank has enjoyed your $500,000. Frank has got to change to make room for you to take care of yourself. Maybe Frank doesn’t need a brand new Mercedes. Maybe you don’t have to live in an 8,000 square foot house. Maybe Frank can do more of what he did here today, which is listen to you, care and make space for your feelings and good sense.”“Yes,” Diane admitted. “That would help.”I don’t think I can make the point that balance begins inside the self any better than Frank and Diane’s story did. You won’t find peace and balance in your marriage, until you find balance in yourself. When we have a clear sense of who we are, the good and the bad, we can be a good partner. But if we think we are all good or all bad, God help our partners. To improve our relationship we must first work on ourselves.One might think that what Diane needs is good cognitive behavioral therapy, because she suffers from “stinkin thinkin.” I don’t entirely disagree with that, but it's more than “stinkin thinkin”—she suffers from faulty feelings. She is addicted to the emotion of disgust. Most of the time she aims her disgust at herself. When her disgust is not aimed at herself, Frank is often its target.Most of us use only half of the nine basic emotions to motivate and defend ourselves. (I write about this in my book Emotion Rituals). Diane uses only four of the nine basic emotions. She uses shame, sadness, fear and disgust. She avoids the emotions of joy, desire, relaxation, surprise and anger. She needs to focus on expanding her emotional range.Diane and Frank must keep working to make room for Diane to rest and to feel the joy that she deserves to feel from her competence. It would be nice if Diane and Frank came to their relationship as two whole adults.It is best if a relationship begins with competent adults as the main ingredients. Probably that will take a lifetime for Diane and Frank, just as it does for most of us. Until then, an apology may be the best we can do. 

Chapter Five: Communion, Page 2

Helping Doesn’t Help: Samantha and SteveSometimes one person wishes to help, but the other does not want to be helped, and this can create conflict. Samantha and Steve were consulting me. Steve was the athletic director at one of the local colleges. Samantha was a stay-at-home mom. They had three children under the age of five.To open the first session I asked, “How can I help you?”They were sitting at 90° angles on adjacent coaches.Samantha was the first to answer, “We used to love talking together when we were courting. We couldn’t wait to see one another. Or anyway that was how I felt and I thought Steve did too. Steve told me every detail about the time we were apart and I did the same back to him. Each of us talked and listened equally, each about half the time.“Now Steve doesn’t have anything to say to me. I feel shut out of his life. When he comes home, I tell him about my boring days with the children. Sometimes what I have to say about the children is not boring. But I am living in a children’s universe. I have little adult contact. I feel like a nanny or wet-nurse, not like an adult or much less like a woman.“Steve is my main contact with the world outside the children and he doesn’t share with me the stories of his work and his sports world. And I even like sports. I learn more about what’s going on with his teams from the newspaper than I do from him. Something has happened to our communication and I don’t know what.”“Why are you here, Steve?” I asked.“Because Samantha wanted to come.”“Do you see the same communication problems in your marriage as Samantha?” I asked.“No,” Steve replied. “When I come home there is a lot to do. I pitch in and try to help. I will change a diaper or put on some rice for supper or feed the middle one or pick up toys or give baths. It’s always something. There doesn’t seem to be any time to talk.”“The children are always down by 8:00 P.M.,” Samantha said. “And then you are watching ESPN. I ask you to turn off the TV and you do. I try to start a conversation by telling you about my day. You listen. Then I ask you about your day and you say, ‘nothing happened’ and then you turn the TV back on. Isn’t that right?”“I suppose so,” Steve answered.“Then the next morning I get the paper and I read where the girl’s basketball team won the conference title. And you didn’t tell me.”“I’m sorry. I forgot,” Steve said.“What really happened was you didn’t want to talk to me,” Samantha said. “You would rather watch ESPN. How do you think that feels that your husband would rather watch pro basketball than talk to his wife or perhaps make love with his wife?“But I get it. I don’t expect us to be making love when you don’t even consider me worth talking to.”“Steve,” I said. “Can you see that Samantha feels rejected and abandoned by you?”“Yes,” Steve replied. “I can see that. But I am not intending to do that. I don’t know what to say. I love Samantha. It is pretty much like she describes. I guess I don’t share much with her. Maybe I’m just too tired. I don’t really understand it myself.“Well let’s try to have a conversation about your day now,” I suggested. “Steve, can you begin?”“Yes, I guess so,” Steve answered. “Well I had to go to an alumni lunch today. I had to introduce our new football coach so I had to write my speech. Then after lunch I came here. One of the parents of a player on the girl’s softball team complained to me about the coach yelling at their daughter. So after this I’m going to go to watch the girl’s softball team practice. If I see something I don’t like, I will have to have a talk with the coach. I dread that. Then I have to go watch intramural soccer after that. I will come home exhausted.”“You don’t have to go watch soccer,” Samantha said. “And the girl’s softball coach is a jerk and you need to talk to him about how he treats his players. If he doesn’t straighten up, you should fire him.”Steve didn’t respond. There was silence for a time.“See? That’s what happens,” Samantha said. “Steve just stops talking. The conversation is over. If we were at home in the living room, the next thing that would happen is that the TV would suddenly come on. Then I would give up and leave.”“Do you think you said anything that may have shut Steve down?” I asked.“I don’t think so,” Samantha answered.“I think maybe you did,” I said.“What did I say?”“You told him what he should do,” I said.“I was just trying to help. He always comes home tired. I was trying to help him take care of himself.”“Steve, does Samantha’s help do anything for you?” I asked.“No,” he said. “It only makes me feel stupid or guilty and then I don’t want to talk to her.”“Do you have anybody to talk to who will listen to you instead of helping you?” I asked.“My friend Mike,” Steve answered. “He teaches English. We get a beer together sometimes at Jed’s after 5:00. He listens. He does not give me advice or help. He just listens and understands how I feel and he talks about the politics in the English department. I know nothing about academic departmental politics, but I listen. I can’t help him either but I think my listening makes him feel better and I know I appreciate Mike for listening to me and understanding how I feel.”“But I want to be your partner,” Samantha said. “I don’t want to just listen. I want to help.”“Your help doesn’t help,” Steve said. “I don’t tell you how to be a mother. I don’t tell you how and when to breast feed. I wish you expressed more milk so I could feed the baby too, but I do not know how you could manage the children and do what you do. I don’t think you would like me trying to help by telling you what you could do.”“No I wouldn’t,” Samantha said with an edge to her voice. “In fact if you told me to express milk more, I would be furious. You have no idea how hard it is to do what I’m doing and then you want me to express milk for you so you can feel like you have your turn at bonding with the baby. That sounds all well and good in theory but you have no idea what effect that would have on me.”“Are you listening to what you are saying, Samantha?” I asked.“No,” she answered. “I am too angry.”“Well, maybe this anger is what Steve feels when you try to help him. Maybe he thinks it would be better for him to say nothing than to tell you how angry you have made him, when you try to give him help he didn’t ask for. He understands his job—from being inside the job. There is no way you can understand the demands of his job just as there is no way he can understand the demands your children place on you.“That’s right,” Steve said. “I wish you would just listen, understand and respect that I know what I’m doing. When you offer help and advice, I feel like you think I’m stupid and that you know something I don’t.“It is my job to oversee intramural sports. I have to make sure referees are there and that players who are injured are taken to the emergency room at the hospital. I wish I could come home but I can’t.“And yes, I know the girls’ softball coach yells at the girls. I want to help him find the good in himself. I don’t want to just treat him as he treats his players. It is more complicated than that. He wins games. Most of his players like him. I’m not going to fire him.“It is easy for you to make these suggestions but it just shows me how much you do not understand and how useless it is for me to talk to you.  I don’t want your help. I do wish I had your understanding.”“How can I be a part of your life if I can’t help you?” Samantha asked.“You can respect that I know how to solve my problems better than you do,” Steve answered. “When I tell you about a problem, instead of trying to fix it, you can tell me about how you feel lost sometimes too. I don’t want to hear that you know what to do, while I don’t. I don’t want your simplistic solutions that show me you haven’t got a clue.“In my time, in my way I will figure something out. What I need in a partner is someone who believes in me and trusts that I will find my way. And yes, I would like to be able to talk with you and trust that you will listen, really listen without thinking you have to fix something. Helping me doesn’t help.” Samantha wanted to help. She wanted to give Steve an answer, to fix his problem, to rescue him and to be his hero. She must have tried to help many times only to fail and with each failure she only tried harder. And the harder she tried to help Steve the more he resisted her help.It is a sad outcome when people are motivated with good intentions and hearts full of love. Later when the chapter discusses communion, witnessing and testifying, you will see how Samantha may have helped without solving Steve’s problems.

Chapter 6: Confessional Communication, page 16

Yes But: Marietta and David 

My wife, Marietta, and I were trying to print something from our computer. We printed several documents that were not the document we really needed. When it got to our document, the printer jammed.

             “Dammit,” I said, “The printer is jammed.”

            “Oh, no problem,” Marietta said. “A paper jam is easy to fix.”

            “Yes, but not on this printer,” I said. “The printer display says undo the back. I tried but the back won’t come off.”

            “Yes but,” Marietta said, “you don’t know how. I do.”

            “But I do know how,” I said. “It’s my printer. The back is hard to undo.”

            “But I haven’t tried it yet,” Marietta replied. “Let me get at the back of the printer.”    I had been trying with no success to open the back of the printer. She turned the printer so that she could get to its back.

            “But I almost had it open,” I said.

            “But you don’t know what you are doing,” she replied, “and I do.”

            “But even if you get it open, you won’t know how to unjam the paper.”

              I could go on, but I think you have probably read enough. In this conversation Marietta and I were frustrated with the printer. We took out our frustration on one another by competing to be the hero who fixed the printer. We both wanted to redeem our failure at the expense of the other. “Yes but” were the introductory words to our contest.

            Now consider how the conversation might go if we used the words “yes and” instead.

            “Dammit,” I said. “The printer is jammed.”

            “Oh no problem,” Marietta said. “A paper jam is easy to fix.”

            “Yes but,” I said and then I caught myself. “Let me start over again. Yes, perhaps in your experience with other printers a paper jam has been easily fixed. My experience with this printer is that paper jams are difficult to fix.”

            “Yes but,” Marietta began. Then she caught herself and said, “Let me start over, too. So your experience with paper jams on this printer has been frustrating. So what have you tried?”

            “The printer says here that you have to open the printer from the back to get to the jam. That’s hard enough and pulling the jammed paper out is even harder.”

            “Can I take a look at the back of the printer?” Marietta asked.

            I turned the back of the printer to face her. She made a couple of attempts to undo the back and said, “This is not easy.”

            “And it is even harder to put back once it’s out.”

            Then she pushed something and the back popped out.

            “How did that happen!” she exclaimed.

            “I feel the same way when I work on a paper jam with this printer,” I said.

             Wasn’t this second conversation easier to read? I hope you can tell by the contrast of these conversations that “yes and” and the spirit of acknowledging first and then adding works better than pushing away and discounting with “yes but.”

          Talking together using “yes and” is like developing a recipe for a soup together. Such a conversation might go like this:

            Partner #1: Let’s add some onions.

            Partner #2: Yes let’s. I love onions. And let’s add some carrots.

            Partner #1: Yes, a good idea and let’s turn down the heat because carrots take a long time to cook and we don’t want to cook away all the liquid.

            Partner #2: Yes, good idea and let’s add some red wine.

            Partner #1: Okay some wine. Now we will need something to reduce the acidity that might come from the wine. What about potatoes?

            Partner #2: Potatoes, yes, and let’s boil them in water first because the wine might turn them blue.

            Partner #1: Good idea. I hadn’t thought of that.

             Without out “yes and” and with “yes but” instead, a conversation would hurt.Saying “yes but” is like sticking your hand in the soup and pulling out the potatoes. You will insult the other person and burn your hand in the process. “Yes and” makes you partners. “Yes but” makes you competitors.

Chapter Seven: From Anger to Compassion

I first saw Mahala and Tonya twenty-four years ago when they first got together. They parented three children, one adopted son from China and two girls who were conceived from a sperm donor, one born to Mahala and the other to Tonya. Mahala was and is a famous singer/songwriter. She has a demanding schedule so most of the parenting duties have fallen to Tonya. Two of their children, Kathy and Tom, are in college. Sonya is a junior in high school. Mahala and Tonya were entering menopause together. Both had issues with anger and both were easily triggered into being angry.“So this is menopause,” Mahala said.“It might be easier going through this with a male partner,” Tonya said.“Men have their own issues at mid-life,” I said.“We wouldn’t know,” Mahala said. “So what do we do?”“This fellow Steven Stosny has developed a ritual that I intend to teach you,” I said. “If you learn to use it, this ritual will transform your anger into compassion and help you become a person of compassion instead of an angry idiot.”“You are calling us angry idiots,” Tonya said.“You are not angry idiots now,” I said. “But anger shuts off two-thirds of your brain and leaves you with a brain of a five-year-old child. And you two are in your forties. For a forty-year-old adult, that would make you an idiot.”“After our fights, when I have calmed down, I can’t believe I said those things,” Tonya said. “They were so childish. I didn’t mean most of them.”‘”I’m the same,” Mahala concurred. “I play back what happened in our fights and I acted like I remember our children acting. When they witness our fights, they just walk away disgusted. I can’t blame them. I’m disgusted too. Angry idiots. I plead guilty.”“So what is this ritual?” Tonya asked.“I call it the HEART ritual.”“How does it work?” Mahala asked.“When we are angry, our bodies and brains are filled with angry neurohormones—endorphins and norepinephrine to reduce pain and vasopressin and cortisol to raise our blood pressure and increase our heart rate. These neurohormones work together. The thalamus-amygdala parts of the brain pull the blood away from the skin, shut down sensory input and force us into narrow, either/or thinking. As long as these angry neurohormones dominate our brains, we will be angry and limited in our ability to think. No one but us can change these chemicals.”“So what do we do, take a pill?” Mahala asked.“No,” I answered. “You move from anger to a different emotion. Each emotion has its own set of neurohormones. If you invite a new emotion into your brain, the anger neurohormones will be diluted. Other parts of your brain will be turned on so that your thoughts are not so restricted.”“So there are a lot of emotions,” Mahala said. “Which ones do we go to to get our brains and mouths washed out?”“There are nine basic emotions,” I said. “They are anger, fear, sadness, joy, desire, shame, surprise, disgust and rest or sleep. Fear won’t work. It might shut down anger, but the moment your oppressor releases you, your anger pops back. Surprise adds energy and we need to calm down. So surprise won’t work. Desire also adds energy. Joy will merge easily with anger and we become sadistic, enjoying our cruelty. You don’t want to go to joy. Rest or sleep would be good but most of us can’t go from rage to sleep. Disgust works with anger like joy does, making us entitled to look down upon the object of our anger.So that leaves sadness or shame to be our best options. They are different versions of hurt. The basis of most anger is hurt. Our anger works as a defense to protect us from being hurt more. So it is easy to find our hurt below our anger, if we take time to look.”“I don’t want to look for my hurt,” Mahala said. “I have enough of that. I will just get stuck there because I will believe I am a worthless piece of crap.”“Well there’s a step to help us avoid that deep shame pit as well,” I said. “That’s the third step.”“So go through steps of the HEART ritual with us,” Tonya said.  The HEART RitualH – Halt. Stop. Don’t say another word. Don’t move. Imagine seeing a stop sign or H A L T in flashing letters. You have engaged will power and will power only lasts about 40 seconds. That’s how long you have to get to the next step. Halt only tells you not to feel; this never works for long. You must feel something. So get to step two as quickly as you can. E – Explore or Examine your hurt beneath your anger. Memorize these words:Unimportant            Powerless      Disregarded              UnlovableDevalued                   Accused         Rejected        Unfit for Human Contact Memorizing these words and choosing one or a few of them engages your whole brain. Having these words at the ready will get you into your neo-cortex sooner.Once you have chosen one or two of these words to represent your feelings, remember another time/place/person when you felt this hurt. Remember the person who hurt you. Feel the hurt you felt then until you are feeling sad or ashamed, perhaps near tears. Here you focus on simply putting new emotional chemicals in your brain and body. This step has nothing to do with anybody else but you or anything outside you. It is about changing things on the inside of you. Reflect on your past hurt until you feel sad. Once this is done, you are ready for the next step. A – Ask the question. The question is: Am I really _______. Fill in the blank from your choice of emotion words from the last step.Unimportant            Powerless      Disregarded              UnlovableDevalued                   Accused         Rejected        Unfit for Human ContactThe answer is always “No.” Keep asking yourself this question and answering this question for yourself until your answer is an emphatic “NO!”This stops any downward spiral into depression or toxic shame. Here, you are reminding yourself of your basic self-worth. You are loving yourself. You must do this before you can successfully go to the next step. If you don’t like yourself, you will justify behavior and defend yourself with anger. R – Respect the person who is the object of your anger. They have feelings just like you do. Look inside them in your imagination and see if you can imagine what they might be feeling. If you look, you will see some of the same feelings you have just felt. Use the same words you used to represent your hurt:Unimportant            Powerless      Disregarded              UnlovableDevalued                   Accused         Rejected        Unfit for Human ContactWe can’t be expected to precisely know how another person feels. That’s not the point. The point is to take us out of our narcissistic pity party and to help us join the human community. Life is a bitch for all of us, even the person with whom we are angry. Once we see that we are suffering disappointment and hurt together, we see that our opponent deserves our compassion and understanding. Now you are ready for the next step. T – Together you can solve the problem or wait until things have calmed down so that each of you can care about how the other feels and then use your collective imaginations to discover a creative resolution.    HEART in Action: Mahala and Tonya ContinuedIn our next session, Mahala and Tonya reported back on their efforts to improve their relationship with the HEART ritual. They found it useful for talking to their children too.“So I tried this HEART ritual with our daughter,” Mahala said. “She’s a lot like me. She is stubborn and intense. She has to have her way or else. She was about to unravel into her rage and I stopped her and I said. ‘You are angry Sonya, but below your anger you are hurt. Think about how and why you are hurt.’She said, ‘I want to go to Julie’s house. She’s my best friend and she just broke up with her boyfriend and she needs me. I know it’s a school night, but I feel bad that I’m not there for her. I feel like I’m letting her down. I feel guilty. That’s how I feel.’ I responded by saying. ‘Feel that. That is an honorable feeling, to love Julie and to want to be her friend and to be sad because it’s a school night and your mother won’t let you go to her house. I understand how you feel. There are times I’m away from you that I want to be with you and I can’t. It hurts.’“She cried. I held her. It was so much easier to deal with her when she was feeling her sadness than it was when she was attacking me with her rage.“It must be the same for Tonya. I could talk about my hurt rather than raging at her or cutting her off and withdrawing into my righteous, self-serving anger with a book and a drink.”“That’s great,” I said. “Your daughter found her hurt below her anger. We all can do that sometimes. But it takes a mature adult to get from anger to compassion. Children often don’t have the resources to do that.”“I did that successfully this week,” Tonya said. “Mahala told me she would be back from a trip by 2:00 PM. I was counting on her to be home because I had to go with Sonya for her first adult doctor visit. Tom wanted to buy a car. He had money from his summer job burning a hole in his pocket. Mahala was supposed to go with him to look at a car that Tom saw in the paper. I had to leave at 3:00 P.M. Mahala wasn’t home. I could feel myself getting angry. I did the HEART ritual. I halted. I got to my feelings of being disregarded and powerless.“I thought back to a similar time when I was a girl and my daddy forgot me at school and I felt my tears. That’s the second step. Then I realized I wasn’t completely powerless, the third step. I would take Sonya to her doctor’s appointment. Tom could go by himself. He could look at the car but not buy it. If he liked it, then Mahala or I could get it checked out by our mechanic.“Then I thought about Mahala and how she must have felt, the fourth step. Mahala was stuck on a tour bus or she would be home. She must be feeling sad and powerless, that she was not able to make it back when she said. I was not angry anymore. It felt great. The HEART ritual changed the whole experience for me. My anger didn’t capture me. I was free. I don’t know how to explain how good that felt to me. I was so proud that I could do that for myself.”“I’m glad you could do that, too,” Mahala said. “That meant I didn’t walk into your verbal buzz saw when I got back at 4:00. Tom did a good job of not buying and negotiating permission for us to have the car checked out by our mechanic the next day. Things were pleasant when I got home. That was a gift to me.”“But it was more a gift to myself,” Tonya said. “My back did not get tense. I didn’t get a headache. I didn’t become stupid. I didn’t take it out on the kids. And best of all, I have no legacy of angry tantrums to feel guilty about. I am proud of myself and proud that I had the internal strength to find compassion for Mahala.” Then she turned and looked at Mahala. “Mahala, I’m glad you appreciate this. But mostly I’m proud of myself that I could contain my anger myself.” Compassion is the antidote to anger. You can see it in this story. It helps relationships, of course, but compassion’s greatest gift is that it helps our souls. It pulls us out from our small petty survival. We leave behind our law-of-the-jungle selves and move into the human community of other lost souls who are hurting and need one another. Instead of being the center of our world, filled with our hurt alone, compassion makes us part of a fabric of human life, filled with opportunities to love, collaborate and to be creative problem solvers. In the compassionate place we find a seat at the table with others where we belong and can contribute. In our poor-me, self-pitying, self-important universe of anger and defenses, we are lonely, competitive, miserable people.In the military, defensive thinking is often required. The military is organized around survival and defending against a threat. A common military mantra is “Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.” This may be the correct strategy when making war with real enemies, but when dealing with those we love, it just perpetuates pain.This defensive military strategy will never bring peace. Real peace will only come through the strength of compassion. Yes, you must be strong to wage war, but you must be stronger to build real peace. 

Chapter Eight: A Constructive Reframe

The therapist may offer a reframe that creates a new way to understand the problems in a relationship. You’ll recall Tonya and Mahala from chapter 7. Just prior to the session reported in the last chapter they were having a serious crisis. This story comes from that visit.“Tonya’s gone nuts,” Mahala said. “I don’t know what’s happened. She had an affair with the carpenter last year. She admits it. After thirty years as a lesbian, she comes out of the closet and she is suddenly straight.”“You are never home,” Tonya said. “And suddenly you are so demanding and drinking more. You are angry when you are sober. You retreat to your music room, where you can’t be disturbed. We have no social life. I take care of the children while you are out of town, which is 200 days a year. And when you are home you are too exhausted to go out with me or to entertain friends. You enjoy a book more than you do me or the children. What was I supposed to do?”“I think she may be bipolar,” Mahala said. “We both think her father and his mother were. It runs in families. And suddenly she seems to be impulsive, self-destructive and angry like manic people often are. I have been a social recluse since she has known me. I have always liked to work alone on my music or read a good book. This is nothing new.“I play the father role in our family. I am the provider. I tend to the children some when I’m in town, but Tonya has always been their mother. She is the one they count on. They overwhelm me sometimes. Tonya has accepted this role gladly—until now. I think she is having a bipolar episode.”“I think Mahala has become a full-blown alcoholic,” Tonya said. “She always drank too much. She stopped smoking marijuana two years ago because it was affecting her voice. Her mother was an alcoholic, her brother, her uncle, her grandfather — talk about running in families! Mahala has gone overboard with her drinking and anger. And she is trying to blame this on me.”Tears came to Tonya’s eyes. She bit her lip and continued, “I admit things are different for me now. I don’t love and worship her like I did. I’m angry about the children. The birth of Kathy was particularly hard for me. She was out of town at the time. The only childcare she can claim is that she was present for the birth of Sonya, but she scheduled that and had a simple C-section. Two weeks after Kathy was born, she left to go out of town and I was Sonya’s wet nurse. I had to go alone to China to get Tom.  I admit I never complained about this. But secretly, I resented it.” Tonya’s voice took a firmer tone.“And yes, I’m speaking up about it now. I’m not bipolar. I’m not spending money lavishly. Yes, I had an affair, one in twenty-five years. Since she is so often on the road, I have never asked Mahala how many affairs she has had because I don’t want to know.”“I don’t drink as much as my grandfather did or my uncle or brother,” Mahala said. “And perhaps I need to cut down. This is the first I have heard Tonya complain about that. My road manager mentioned my drinking one time but Tonya never has. I stopped drinking for six months two years ago. I could do that again.”“Do you want a divorce?” I asked.“Well, we can’t get divorced,” Tonya said. “Tennessee doesn’t recognize that we are married.”“Of course,” I said.“And if we did dissolve our union, Tonya would get nothing,” Mahala said. “And I would have no one to take care of Sonya and Tom. And legally I suppose she could take Kathy away and I would never see her again. It is clear that she is their primary parent. They all would be loyal to her. I don’t want a divorce either, even if Tennessee did allow that. I want you to tell Tonya to see a psychiatrist and get on lithium.”“And I want you to stop drinking!” Tonya shouted at Mahala. “And for your information, I have seen a psychiatrist. He gave me a prescription for Prozac. He said I was depressed and that I was not bipolar.”“Well, I can stop drinking for six months,” Mahala said.“These sound like good next steps,” I said.“Yes, but we are still yelling at each other and I don’t feel any closer,” Tonya said.Mahala said, “That’s why we came to you. We need help.”“How old are you?” I asked.“I’m 49, Mahala’s 48,” Tonya answered.“Do you remember Ms. Magazine?” I asked.“Sure,” they responded.“The editors of Ms. commissioned a book once about what happens to a young girl’s personality when she hits puberty,” I explained. “The premise was that a ten-year-old prepubescent girl has a clear sense of her likes and dislikes. She is just as full of spit and vinegar as any boy. She has her own agenda. And then comes puberty and estrogen. The girl turns into a social caretaker, pleasing others before attending to herself. This nurturing can become so intense that, as a girl transforms into a woman, she can lose herself. Many women are lost to themselves, taking care of husbands and children until they reach menopause. And then they lose their estrogen and they get back their spit and vinegar.“Often marriages crash on the rocks of menopause. The contract changes. The woman is no longer willing to serve her husband. She has her own interests to pursue.“I once was in a group therapy session of 75 or so therapists sitting in a large circle. Across from me was a woman about 50 years old. About seven people down from me on my side of the room was her husband. The woman said, ‘I’m fifty years old. My children are grown. I don’t want any more children. I’m tired of people sucking on my tits. I’m closing down that part of my life. My tits are closed for business.’ With that she glared at her husband. It was clear they were renegotiating their marriage contract at this stage of their marriage.“It appears to me that you two are at a similar place. Tonya wants to renegotiate the marriage contract.”“That’s right,” Tonya said. “There are things I used to let pass that I can’t anymore. I have to stick up for me now. I won’t let Mahala have her way just because she makes the money or the world thinks she is a star. My life is just as important as hers and I intend to reclaim my life.”“This is making some sense to me,” Mahala said. “I haven’t wanted to talk about this and I’ll bet Tonya is as embarrassed to admit this as I am, but I have hot flashes. I got a hairpiece recently because my hair is thinning. I can’t get rid of the ten pounds I have around my middle. I’ve lost interest in sex. I thought it was because I was drinking so much, but maybe I’m low on hormones.”“You know how before menopause you women have had the opportunity once a month to check out the dark side of your emotions?” I asked.“Opportunity,” Tonya said. “Is that what you call it?”“Well yes,” I said. “We men just go along pretending all is well. We never are really called to clean out our emotional closets. But once a month women get that chance.“Menopause is, I think, a chance to take this to a different level. Tonya wants to clean out the resentments in your marriage. She wants to reclaim her life. She wants to go into the past and tell you things about how she feels that you never knew. If you are willing, perhaps she can rid herself of a lot of emotional poison. If you care and can be accountable for how you hurt her, perhaps she can forgive you, reclaim her soul and make a new relationship contract with you. And perhaps you might find you need to clean out your emotional closet as well.”“I never thought of our conflicts like this,” Mahala said.“Me either,” Tonya agreed. “I’m game. This is the first hope I have had in two years.”“I feel good about this too,” Mahala said.This story demonstrated how a new way of thinking helped a relationship move beyond a stalemate. The conflict was joined; blame cast back and forth; the impasse clear. There appeared to be little common ground. Then the therapist offered a new frame for the conflict. The frame put things in perspective. It made a place for all parties’ feelings. It raised the conversation from personal to universal. It helped un-demonize and un-victimize all the parties. In this story a reframe was all that was needed.In this story the therapist was not just a neutral person. As the therapist, my character brought something new to the table, something that added information, another emotion and a different level of thought. Therapists must be neutral with no personal stake in the conflict. But they should add a new flavor, serve a new value, and create some reason to reopen the minds with two opposing points of view.Good reframing of the conversation does this. The notion of menopause elevated the dialogue. It stopped the blaming and gave Tonya and Mahala a new way to think about their feelings as a problem of aging, not a problem of personalities. 

Chapter Nine: Two Interacting Parts

All social interactions consist of two parts. The first part, as described above, has often been defined as the male part. The receptive part, the second part, has traditionally been considered the female part. Instead of using gender terms, I suggest that we imagine a bolt and a nut.The bolt represents the projection of an idea, invitation, a proposal for action or an initiative. The nut represents the question that should meet a proposal or a bolt. And that question is: Does this fit here in this place, at this time, with these people? And does it serve a purpose? The bolt needs help to find a place where it belongs. Too often people project ideas that are not appropriate and do not fit the circumstances. Too often no one offers to help this initiative find its fit. Both the nut (the receiver) and the bolt (the initiator) play important roles in every social exchange. Though the terms “nut” and “bolt” provide illustrative images, they also contain some unfortunate pejorative meanings. Consequently, I will more often use the terms “initiator” and “receiver.” Whatever term we choose, the hope is that we challenge ourselves to develop both parts and learn to use them for the good of the relationship.Recently, I attended a local theatre production. In front of us sat two couples. At intermission, they stood and the women went together to the restroom, leaving the men standing, talking in front of us. One of them, Tom, was tall and fit while the other, Bill, was bald and a bit more round.“We just returned from seeing our son’s family in Ohio,” Bill said. “I played this great golf course, Rock Springs Golf Club. My son is a member. It’s a Nicklaus-designed course, very challenging. A good golfer like you would enjoy playing it.”“I have no time to go out of town,” Tom said, “and when I do, my wife likes to go to the beach. We are too busy raising our son’s children, while he serves his time in prison for dealing drugs. I wish I knew your secret for raising a boy into a man, Bill. How did you get your son into sports? I never got my son into team activities. I coached his Little League baseball team, but that didn’t work.”“My son liked any game with a ball and a team,” Bill said. “My secret? I never tried to coach him. I took him to batting lessons and pitching lessons and on the way home he would teach me what he learned. I played stupid to his smart. I think that worked because I didn’t get in his way.”“I’m going to try that with my nine-year-old grandson, that’s a good idea.” In this conversation Bill played the initiator (bolt) role and Tom took the receiver (nut) role. Bill proposed an idea and Tom expressed interest and allowed the idea to fit or not. Inside the conversation is another initiator and receiver example. Bill told Tom that he gave the initiator role to his son and he took the receiver role, celebrating his son’s knowledge. When the two women returned from the restroom they stood and talked in the aisle for a moment. One woman, Alice, was tall and dressed formally. The other woman, Tina, was short and petite, dressed in stylish exercise pants, jacket and running shoes.“Tina, I wish I could find the time to exercise like you,” Alice said. “I am twenty pounds overweight.”“No you aren’t,” Tina said in an authoritative voice. “The secret is just making yourself do it. I came here from the gym. You just have to organize your day and make it a priority.”“You are right,” Alice said. “I need to be more organized.”Here Tina played the initiator/bolt and Alice the receiver/nut. You see these roles in every conversation around you and in every conversation you have.Sometimes people compete for the roles. When one person stakes out the initiator role, another person might try to take that role away.Alice and Tina’s further conversation offers an example.“I know an excellent personal trainer,” Tina said.“Oh, I know the best in town and I have trained with him,” Alice said.“Mine is a she,” Tina said. “Perhaps you would do better with a woman.”“No,” Alice said. “I prefer working with a male trainer.”“Why Alice, that’s silly.”“No, it’s silly to work with a woman when you could be working with a man.” In this conversation Alice and Tina competed for the initiator role. They got nowhere because neither of them played the reciprocal receiver role.Tina might have said, “I get it, Alice. I’m missing a good time. I talk to Tom and rarely to any other man. I would enjoy a male trainer.” Then there would be a place to put what Alice knows and the conversation would have resolved and moved on.Or Alice might have said, “You know Tina, I have been unsuccessful with that male trainer. I’m embarrassed to be so exposed in front of a man as fat as I am. You’re right. A woman trainer would be better.” If Alice had said this, she would have taken on the receiver role and the conversation would have resolved and moved on.Now consider Tom and Bill competing for the nurturing, receiving role.“That thin body,” Bill said, “shows me that you have found the secret for life.”“No Bill,” Tom said. “I envy you your healthy, happy son with good sense and a good job. You have the secret to a good life.”“No, that’s just luck,” Bill said. “You know how to take care of yourself and you do.”“Yes, I can lift weights,” Tom said, “but I can’t raise a son like you did.” They could go competing to be the receiver person who nurtures and gives power away to the other, Tom wanting to honor and appreciate what Bill knew and Bill trying to do the same for Tom.Bill could have resolved this competition by saying:“You are right. I raised a fine boy. I’m thankful for that.”If Bill had said this, he would have become the bolt received by Tom’s open receiver role.If Tom had said, “You are right. I work out every day. Try it. You will feel better.” Then Tom would have resolved the conversation by becoming the initiator to Bill’s receiver role.As these examples suggest, it is important to note that these roles are not exclusive to men or women. Both sexes play both roles, as you can see in the above examples. Yes, women tend to play the receiver role more often than men and men play the initiator role more often and some people seem to always tend toward one role or the other. We all have played both roles at one time or another. And today, more often than ever before, women take on the initiator role, while men take on the receiver role.This is not the first time that a writer has observed these two aspects of social engagement. Heraclitus proposed a law that every proposition attracts its opposite. Freud used unfortunate language to observe how erections or proposals attract castration or attack. Jung saw this phenomenon in terms of gender and called it anima and animus. He noted Eastern philosophers who used “yin” and “yang” to make this same point. In many languages words are sexualized and one word represents the feminine meaning of the term while another represents the masculine of the same term. 

Chapter Ten: The Ego

Barbara and Allen were forty-eight years old and in their second marriage. Both had active careers; both were naturally friendly affable people. And both liked to be right.“He embarrassed me in public,” she said.“You left me standing there and walked into the other room,” he said.“What are you talking about?” I asked.“We were shopping for tile,” Allan said. “Not my most favorite thing. I could have been home watching the football game. And we were looking at samples. We had narrowed it down to five. And she disappears. She is in the other room looking at carpet. We weren’t shopping for carpet.”“Well, we are going to need carpet, probably,” Barbara said.“But you left me standing there with the sales clerk feeling like a fool.”“My back hurt standing there. I needed to move. You know I can’t stand in one place too long.”“No I don’t,” Allan said. “Sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t. I can’t read your mind.”“No, but you seem very good at raising your voice, reprimanding me in front of others and embarrassing me. And I don’t appreciate that kind of treatment.”“Dr. McMillan,” Allan said turning to me sitting in my rocker in front of them on the couch, “What do we do?”“I wonder,” I said, “if you can see that it is an offense to take an offense. Your problem is not each other. Your problem is your egos.”“What do you mean?” Barbara said.“”Allan was shopping with you for tile,” I replied. “Trying to be a good partner, focusing on the task at hand. And you take offense when he felt abandoned by you. You did in fact leave him to go to another room. Instead of being embarrassed, you might have taken the fight to your hurt pride, put it in its place and said, ‘sorry. I left you. My back hurt and I needed to walk.’”“Yes,” Allan said, “and then we would have been fine.”“Not so fast Allan,” I said. “And you, instead of getting your feelings hurt simply because your wife left your side for a moment, could have done battle with your ego instead and said, ‘Barbara, I missed you. Where did you go?’ in a kind voice rather than an offended voice.”“I see what you are saying,” Barbara said. “It’s an offense to take offense. Both of us had our pride hurt and instead of assuming our partner loved and cared for us, we assumed they were our enemy trying to hurt us, when that wasn’t true. Allan was only trying to get the task done for me and I was only trying to cope with my back pain. Allan chose to feel neglected and I chose to feel embarrassed. Both of us focused on the other’s sin and not on the real battle with ourselves.”“You got it,” I said. This is a familiar story that could be told about any couple. When we are insecure and our egos are fragile, we are not strong enough to do battle with our pride. We shift the fight to blaming our mates, forcing the pride battle onto them. They defend their pride and push the pride battle back onto us. The battle with our pride is lost and the battle with our mates will continue until someone takes on their ego and wins that battle. After that, peace in the relationship becomes possible.